Why it makes perfect sense for this bike to have two gears and two chains

arstechnica.com

42 points·thunderbong··3 comments

Regarding two gear internal hubs: these are amazing! I don’t know this specific hub from SRAM but Sturmey-Archer offers similar flip flop hubs as well that toggle gears by slightly pedaling backwards (S2 iirc). I've built three custom bikes so far with those and since you need no cables for them on your frame you can build very 'clean' looking and mechanically robust bikes. I think Fichtel & Sachs first came up with this idea in the 1970s - nice to see that SRAM is picking it up again.

Edit for clarification: the Sturmey-Archer hubs are built to be used with only one chain of course.

> I think Fichtel & Sachs first came up with this idea [two gear internal hubs - CRC] in the 1970s

Not sure, but it feels older than that to me: ISTR riding bikes in the 1970s (and later) that had them, and those bikes felt far from brand-new. Could be misremembering, of course; it was long ago.

> nice to see that SRAM is picking it up again.

Don't they own Fichtel & Sachs nowadays? (Could be misremembering on that too, though.) That could, at least in part, explain why it's precisely SRAM that are doing it now.

You are right about the age of the Sachs Duomatic. This site says they were present already in 1965 (sorry, found nothing in English): https://scheunenfun.de/f+s_duomatic102.htm

I had the same thoughts on the SRAM 'DNA' as well. They bought Fichtel & Sachs in 1997.

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